Postal workers love new USPS delivery vehicle — and it’s not just the air conditioning – Orange County Register

Once fully implemented, they will be one of the most visible signs of a 10-year transformation of the $40 billion agency led by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who is also renovating aging facilities, modernizing its processing and transportation network and making other changes.

The postal service’s current vehicles—the 1987 Grumman Long Life Vehicles—have lived up to their name, exceeding their expected 25-year service life. But they are long overdue for replacement.

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Noisy and fuel-inefficient (9 mpg), Grummans are expensive to maintain. They are very hot in the summer, and only an old-fashioned electric fan circulates air. They have mirrors that, when perfectly aligned, allow the driver to see around the vehicle, but the mirrors are constantly moving out of alignment. Alarmingly, nearly 100 vehicles have burst into flames in the past year, endangering both carriers and the postal service.

The new trucks are built by Oshkosh Defense in South Carolina with comfort, safety and utility in mind.

Even tall mail carriers can stand without hitting their heads and walk from front to back to retrieve packages. For safety, the vehicles have airbags, 360-degree cameras, blind-spot monitoring, collision sensors and anti-lock brakes — all of which are absent from the Grumman.

The new trucks also have something that has been commonplace in most cars for more than six decades: air conditioning. And that’s key for drivers in the Deep South, the desert Southwest and other areas with hot summers.

“I swear I felt like the sky was blowing in my face,” Stonum said of her first experience working in an air-conditioned truck.

Richard Burton, another driver, said he appreciates the larger cargo area that can accommodate larger packages and the fact that he doesn’t have to crouch, which helps him avoid back pain. He added that the old trucks also had a habit of breaking down in traffic.

Brian Renfroe, president of the National Letter Carriers Association, said union members are as enthusiastic about the new vehicles as they were when the Grummans were a step up from the old-school Jeeps that preceded them. He credited DeJoy with a sense of urgency to get them into production.

“We’re excited to get to the point where they’re starting to hit the streets,” Renfroe said.

The beginning of the whole process was difficult.

Environmentalists were outraged when DeJoy announced that 90 percent of next-generation vehicles would be gas-powered first, and lawsuits were filed demanding that the Postal Service continue to electrify its fleet of more than 200,000 vehicles to reduce emissions.

“Everybody went crazy,” DeJoy said.

The problem, Dejoy said, wasn’t that he didn’t want electric vehicles. Rather, the cost of the vehicles, compounded by the costs of installing thousands of charging stations and upgrading electric services, made them unprofitable at a time when the agency was reporting large operating deficits every quarter.

He found a way to further increase the number of electric vehicles when he met with President Joe Biden’s top environmental adviser, John Podesta. That led to a deal in which the government gave $3 billion to the Postal Service, some of which went toward electric vehicle charging stations.

In December 2022, DeJoy announced the Postal Service would buy 106,000 vehicles by 2028. That included 60,000 next-generation vehicles, 45,000 of which were electric models, as well as 21,000 other electric vehicles. He promised to be all-electric for new purchases by 2026.

“With the climate crisis just around the corner, electrifying the U.S. government’s largest fleet will be the progress we’ve been waiting for,” said Katherine García of the Sierra Club, which sued the Postal Service over its decision to increase electric vehicle purchases.